To a pinhole view the world resolved. In haunting hush my brother’s sweet tears were all I heard to comfort a life’s long loss. The room devoured, swallowing breath in its labored breathing, Jonah in the whale. Details smeared in fresco, glossy, distorted. Every step, every word relaxed along the corridor, penetrating, piercing my battled grasp to cling on. You there, browning blood rooted in the piped white stitching. Your words, soundless.

Disdain revolved my iron neck, begging to turn away, only to see her there, slanting through hell’s door; a pig in squalor, a nurse in white, makeup of a whore. Piercing the fleeting glimpse of any dream with, “You need to gather the belongings. Come with me.”

Fleeing you, this trap, I followed her. Fat, short, squat legs pounding busy hallway tiles; purpose of a jack hammer. Spinning, burning in overload through hospital denizens, features stretched, some kind, some lost, some loud… An eon’s flooded blur slammed prostrate to clinical white doors. Another trap to open.

“It’s all in here”, she said, thrusting upon me the brown frayed grocery bag, clasped in sparkles of Swingline precision, his name in black, still wafting a Sharpied rush to the end. Would it ever end?

Heavy armed, I slowly turned to face an eternity lulled to desperate lows, stretching it’s Einstein’d moments illusively, forever before me, pressing mass upon mass, gravity surreally bending the tears to flood.In memory of the waiting room and the aftermath, the day my father died in surgery, June 17, 1985. Written for d’Verse Poets Pub – http://dversepoets.com/

Still the silent quiet of age steeps rich this moment, reflecting,
echoes just what hopes deny in truth’s cold introspecting.
No fear, here, within the pause caught and loosely locked.
Just awe respecting shadow’s keep amongst the greying, flocked.

Shed not a tear for me, for I am ne’er gone away.
But find me in this whispered breeze upon a low and setting ray,
for I’ll see you there.
I’ll touch your young and flowing hair.
I’ll dance about you in delight!
I’ll raise the thrush to song and flight,
that you may sense me here…
my pipe and whiskers smiling, dear.

Quiet now the sighing comes as day’s extent is done,
and here I sit in corner’s chair that by this pen might cull the sum,
the sum, that is, of life and love that passes through the day
and pulls the corners down to fit among these thoughts that stray,
that stray through life’s long memories with children gathered home,
who share sweet smiles in reverie, recount the years we’ve come to roam.

Can there be a heaven blessed beyond a peace as this?
Can there be some greater gift than drifting through this day’s sweet bliss?

I pause to see their faces, feel their hands from small to tall,
hear their laughter’s timber and the path that each one’s life does call.
By grandkid’s eager smiling eyes, by children’s happy grins,
my life in purpose rounded whole sets full within my soul again,
blessed to know the kindest fabric of life in fullest stride
where time grants blessing’s happiness to those I love and hold in pride.